Trading Liberty For Illusions By Wendy Kaminer

Security plays an important job in today’s society, which is to prohibit any type of incoming danger. People want to believe that security is accommodating sanctuary, on the other hand, it is just a false belief. In her article, “Trading Liberty for Illusions”, Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer, claims that people are giving up their privacy for security that is essentially non-existent. The reasons for Kaminer’s assertion is because of the problems of fear and distrust that are arising from face-recognition systems. From my perspective, Kaminer wants the readers, after reading the article, to regain their privacy and only trade it in for security that absolutely provides safety to the society.

Kaminer supports her claim by the effective use of various

strategies. The first strategy that she uses is showing the people that the government is unreliable when it comes to finding criminals using the face-recognition system. Kaminer states that there is a chance for someone innocent that is strolling around the city to “find themselves setting of alarms in facial-recognition systems” (Kaminer,whatever). This shows that the face-recognition system are not working properly and giving out inaccurate results. Kaminer also adds on that the police have a control of the system and choose who they want to question. This illustrates that the police can choose who they want to question whether they are criminals or not. This strategy is not persuasive because the author attacked the face-recognition system and provided only the negative side to it. The readers would probably think of the times the face-recognition system did succeed and caught criminals. The author can be correct, but the readers would feel that the author was biased.

A second strategy that the author uses to convince the readers of her claim is showing that the face-recognition systems are terrifying. Kaminer provides a report by the Detroit Free Press, that states that the police abuse their power and use the database to “stalk women and intimidate other citizens” (Kaminer). This reveals that the police are mistreating people by stalking them and terrifying them with the database. Kaminer also announces that in Britain, the cameras are focusing on minorities and while on break, they are “peering up women’s skirts”(Kaminer). This also proves the fact that people are abusing the database for their own amusement and not focusing on the most important job, which is to catch criminals. This strategy is not persuasive, since cameras are usually being put above ground, there is no way they could look up women’s skirts.

Another way the author supports her claim is providing the readers with a simple organization.

The major sections of the text focus on the negative side of face-recognition systems. One section focuses on the inaccuracy of face-recognition. The second section focuses on how innocent people can trigger the alarm of a face-recognition. The last section would focus on how people are abusing the face-recognition for their own amusements. For instance, looking up women’s skirts. This kind of organization makes the essay more persuasive because it mostly focuses on a single topic, which is basically that face-recognition is evil. The spotlight on face-recognition implements the idea in the readers’ heads that face-recognition is negatively impacting the society. When a reader focuses on a single topic, it makes it easier to be persuaded because of the abundance of information being thrown at the

reader.

The final feature of the author’s argument that makes it persuasive is that the author assumes that people can not challenge the government. Kaminer assumes that the people are “too frightened and uninformed to challenge them” (Kaminer,). This clarifies that Kaminer is exhibiting the fact that the people do not have the power to make the change. Kaminer also presumes that people are trading their liberty for false security is a habit (Kaminer). This illustration proves that Kaminer believes that the people trading their freedom for this fraudulent security is in their nature. Kaminer is writing to an audience that disagree with her because she is mostly attacking the topic. If she wrote it to an audience that agrees with her, then what is the point? This negative attack on face-recognition is trying to persuade people, that are happy with the security that is going on, to open their eyes. Kaminer’s assumptions are persuasive because of the pronoun, “we”, which makes the people feel that Kaminer is also scared and blind about what is honestly going on with the security.

In conclusion, Kaminer’s article was extremely biased, which in my opinion, made it not persuasive.

The strategy of showing that the government is unreliable when it comes to capturing criminals is a bit unfair. This would be unfair because why not show the millions of criminals that were actually caught by face-recognition. The second strategy, which was showing that face-recognition is terrifying because of people abusing it was a bit wierd. The fact that Kaminer mentioned people looking up women’s skirts, immediately made me completely against her. Cameras are never built on the ground, they are made to watch over a huge landscape. Kaminer’s article was mostly based on a single topic, which made it simple. Kaminer also provided assumptions on what people are assuming. Combiner’s assumption are that people are afraid and even ignorant to challenge the government. Kaminer’s article was focusing on only the negative aspects of face-recognition and forced me good aspects of face-recognition, which makes the article not that

persuasive.